Investors Seen Digging Dinosaur Site Outside Faneuil Hall

BOSTON — For a firm whose handle dates to the stone age, Dinosaur Capital’s signature real estate holding here is a thoroughly modern endeavor, with the firm founded by Mark T. Dufton and Scott I. Oran converting a gasoline station perched between Faneuil Hall and North Station into a new-millennium complex sporting a hip local café, indoor parking for 16 cars (preference to smaller vehicles) and protected space for bicycles. One Merrimac also has capabilities to fuel upwards of a dozen electric vehicles, giving it “current” bragging rights as the largest private charging station in Boston.

Those features were denoted this week by Boston Realty Advisors President Michael d’Hemecourt, whose firm is taking the high-profile property in the emerging Bulfinch Triangle to the sales block as exclusive agents. And while BRA cites the diverse income flow as a likely attraction, the campaign is trumpeting the fact any investor would also be securing a site specially permitted for up to 32,000 sf of new construction. An estimated 10 million pedestrians and vehicles stream past the 4,050-sf parcel yearly, according to research provided by BRA in summarizing the listing as “a rare opportunity to acquire a 100-percent occupied jewel box urban asset with development potential.”

“This is a very prominent parcel,” d’Hemecourt tells the Real Reporter in confirming the Bostonbased brokerage firm has been retained to find a taker, a process he predicts when in full swing will yield a flood of prospects and ultimate bidders who could push bidding above $3 million and even approaching the $4 million sphere given the white-hot district that has seen vacancy rates for office space plunge to 7.2 percent after 35,575 sf of net absorption to date in 2013. According to d’Hemecourt, One Merrimac St. at the basis being offered can stand on its own thanks to the .8 FAR permitting level—considered generous by some for such a thickly settled district—but its strategic position at the confluence of Merrimac and Friend Streets should be seen by forward-thinkers as useful in any larger assemblage that might be pursued, he observes. “It’s very key to what might happen down there,” says d’Hemecourt, whose firm is based in the Back Bay but is quick to praise the transformation and attributes of North Station following dismantling of the Interstate 93 and MBTA causeways that darkened the district for decades. Today, One Merrimac is steps from the lush Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway and still benefits from an estimated 75,000 MBTA riders weekly who stream up from two stops of both the North Station and Haymarket Green and Orange Lines (now coursing underground), plus the North Station Transportation Center that brings in a tide of humanity daily from Maine, New Hampshire and the North Shore. The Boston Garden, notes BRA, has 200 events annually, delivering 3.5 million visitors for that alone annually.

On the development front, plans are underway to bring 3,300 new residences, another 700 hotel rooms, 450,000 sf of retail and another 2.2 million sf of retail. “The street presence is unsurpassed,” says d’Hemecourt, a retail expert who points to frontage on three sides of One Merrimac, plus the need for amenities from the many high-end residents coming in to fill luxury apartments and condominiums that never existed before in a district whose most recognized national restaurant chain at one point was Hooters.

“It’s dramatic,” d’Hemecourt says of North Station’s shifting fortunes. While the Hooters era was a brief one, the district post Big-Dig has already welcomed new upscale hotels and restaurants, while Dinosaur Capital made the most out of the One Merrimac parcel in erecting a 475-sf building housing TD Bank in a mini cupola and Cuppacoffee in a mini retail slot benefitting from its visibility and the high pedestrian volume.